'When Breath Becomes Air' by Paul Kalanithi - Book review

There are books that break your heart. And then there are books that create a hole in your chest so deep that it may take a long time to get repaired. These are the books that touch the nerves inside you that hurt the most, strip you of all the faux coping mechanisms under which you have covered yourself and then leave you out in the cold letting those nerves hurt, and hurt hard.

Paul Kalanithi's 'When Breath Becomes Air' is one such book for me. The book though started on a bleak note with a long foreword and a lot of details about Paul's education, his words started touching those raw nerves when he talks about his journey, first as a medical student, then as a doctor and later as a patient.

'When Breath Becomes Air' talks about mortality and life in the rawest words possible. Paul's confessions as a doctor, sympathy towards his patients, the urge to understand the patient-doctor relationship that is laced with limitations and exhilaration both, his responsibility as a neurosurgeon and his quest to understand life and death make you adore him for the person and the doctor that he was. The only thought crosses your mind at this point is 'If only. If only all the doctors in today's times were like him.    

And then starts the narrative of his own journey as a cancer patient at the age of thirty six when life was looking more promising than ever. But as they say, life is what happens to you when you are busy making other plans. During his suffering as a patient, he keeps going back to thinking about the times when the roles were reverse. 

All through the book, you can feel the urgency. The urgency to tell so many things, the urgency to pour everything out, the urgency of time - the most limited resource he had. The book tears you up with a epilogue written by his wife. The details she captured about his death, about her climbing into the bed with him one last time when he was about to let go is heart wrenching. 

I don't know if this book tore me apart because I have a history of losing someone too close to this disease seventeen years ago. And it still hurts the same. But then it is said that when something comes straight from the heart, it hits hard. And a dying man's words couldn't have come from anywhere else. 

This book goes undoubtedly to my list of most loved books. Go read. And get your heart broken a little bit. 

Quoting a few lines that I loved from the book. 

“All of medicine, not just cadaver dissection, trespasses into sacred spheres. Doctors invade the body in every way imaginable. They see people at their most vulnerable, their most scared, their most private. They escort them into the worlds and then back out. Seeing the body as a matter and mechanism is the flip side to easing the most profound human suffering”.

“Learning to judge whose lives could be saved, whose couldn’t be, and whose shouldn’t be requires an unattainable prognostic ability.”  

“When there’s no space for the scalpel, words are the surgeon’s only tool.”

"If the weight of mortality doesn't grow lighter, does it at least grow familiar?”

“Part of the cruelty of cancer, though, is not only that it limits your time; it also limits your energy, vastly reducing the amount you can squeeze into a day”

“Death may be a onetime event, but living with terminal illness is a process”

Nothing but fumes

Sometimes, words are born from the crack in your heart as minor as an hairline fracture, take up space in veins alongside blood forming clots in between and get caught in the lump of your throat choking your voice. 

Because you cannot say them out aloud. Because saying them aloud would mean setting your world ablaze. Creating a pyre with the same hands with which you have nurtured happiness, one day at a time, using your spit as fuel and lighting the fire with your tongue. You are still sane enough to not do that. 

You thus let it bite you in the pit of your stomach. You let the carcasses of your words burn in the same crack in your heart where they were born. You let them rot inside the whole of you. The stench and burden of these words will then come out of your mouth as nothing but fumes. Visible yet invisible. 

How does your body treat you?

Do you ever feel betrayed by your body? Does your body ever disgust you? Or does your body ever scare you? Does it make you livid? Mine does. And I am not talking about all this in terms of the way your body looks, but about the way your body makes you feel.

Does it treat you like a jealous and a possessive lover that is insecure all the time? The one that keeps throwing tantrums to get your attention and keep your attention. Does it treat you like a stubborn old grandfather who refuses to accept anything new? The one who thinks that any deviation from its own thinking is incorrect? Does it treat you like a cruel step mother who wouldn’t let go off any instance to give you pain and discomfort? The one who thinks that being at rest or peace is not your right.

Mine does. All of the above. My own body makes me feel betrayed, disgusted, scared and angry at the same time.

I feel betrayed and disgusted because I didn’t sign up for a body that is weak all the time? In spite of treating it with utmost respect, in spite of trying everything possible to make it feel healthier, it changes only for worse. It betrays me for all the efforts I put towards making it healthier.

I am scared of my body, of trying anything with my body. Be it a new food item, a different sleeping pattern, a new cosmetic product or a mere different workout style. Because it retaliates. As bad as a teenager high on drugs.

It angers me to see other people healthy even when they abuse their bodies so much. Whereas I have been treating it with a caution of a new father holding his child for the first time.

And yet. It behaves the way it wants to behave.   

I can sometimes hear my body talk to me. Like a person. A person who is not an ally. A person sitting across the table scrutinizing and scorning everything I do. Keeping notes for times when it can mock me, smirk at me and take its revenge. I can hear it saying something like, ‘Ahan, so you want to pull a late nighter watching a show on Netflix. Just wait and watch how I make your head explode tomorrow morning’. Or may be something like this, ‘So you think you will be able to get away with eating outside food two days in a row, let me show you the consequences. I am not accepting this food.’

My relationship with my body feels like an unrequited love affair. An affair where I give. And only give. Attention. Care. And medicines. To get nothing in return except being bruised, broken and in nagging pain all the time. Being on medicines for one thing or the other.

Do you know how much amount of time, energy and mental space your own body occupies in case it treats you like mine does? Immense. When I sit and reminisce, it fills me up with regret. Regret of things I could have done if keeping my body in a healthy working condition didn’t occupy so much of my mental space.

So, if yours is treating you well, be grateful. And work towards keeping it that way.

Source: Google images

PS – I am not sick due to any terminal illness. I am just not healthy enough to live without medicines.

Every time you leave

Every time you leave

I start counting backwards

Holding my breath

And your memories

For the time when I will again

Hold you in my eyes

And be held in your arms

Every time you leave

I get engulfed

In an arid sadness

And dizzying loneliness

That only gets cured

After getting inked 

With your smoky lips

And warm embrace

Because whenever you leave

You take a part of me

Leaving your bits

And slow and gradual

I am

Not me anymore

But a reflection

Of nothing

But

You.

Careful

If there is one word that defines my state of mind since a long long time, it would be ‘careful’. That’s what I am these days. All the time. All day. All night. Whether at work or at home. I am careful. It feels as if I am walking on a glass world around me with everything so fragile that one wrong move on my part and it would all just come crashing down. And then, I wouldn’t have anything to pick up from the ashes. The shards would hurt me hard but I wouldn’t have any place to go because those shards were my world. The one I just shattered with my own incompetence.

The planets revolve around their sun on an invisible orbit. They don’t change their route. They can’t I guess. I feel stuck like them. On that invisible orbit around me. Any wrong path I take, any diversion, any digression and I will tilt the whole balance of the universe against my favour, leading only to destruction. Which means that I tread carefully, very carefully. In everything I do. In everything I say. Everything done is measured. Everything said is to be weighed. In a monologue with myself. The consequences of saying and not saying discussed. The repercussions of things done and not done analyzed. And all this weighing, this measurement, this carefulness is burdensome. So much so that it has started affecting my health, my well-being.  

When at home, I fear doing things that aren’t done in a way they are done. At work, I feel out of place. Last year, I did the mistake of making changes in my personal and professional life at the same time. And I think I have been ‘careful’ since then.  

I was never this ‘careful’. In fact, I was somebody who believed in disruption. Not in a destructive way, in a fruitful productive way. I read somewhere that disruption leads to growth. I used to be someone like that. Someone who believed in doing things their way. Someone who didn’t need to follow the norms. Not anymore though. Now, I am careful. Careful of everything. Careful with everything. 

Language

Language. Something that I have always taken for granted. Maybe, because I have always had complete command over the ones spoken around me. Having lived all my life in one place, I took language as a part of me – it was there but invisible, maybe in the background, silent and quiet.

It is only when you are put up at a place where you don’t know the language at all that you realize how big a role it can play. It is then that ‘language’ becomes the ‘visible’ part of your existence, gaining all the importance it deserves, mostly mocking you for taking it for granted all these years, at times being kind throwing a few familiar words in your direction, maybe having the same origin in the languages you have been speaking. It makes you feel primitive because you go back to using gestures with people. It makes you feel alien reminding you that you still don’t belong there. It looks at you in the eye, challenging you in a duel and it knows that it is going to win. It commands you to surrender to it, to accept its superiority.  

It can be irritating initially when you are amidst people speaking a language that you can’t make any sense out of. It is nothing more than a sound to you. Like a constant buzzing around you. They would suddenly start laughing only to make you realize that somebody cracked a joke. You try to fathom what they are saying on the basis of their facial expressions. Oh, he is being shouted upon. Maybe he is trying to explain something difficult. Did he say something so foolish that the other person’s expressions changed so much? Are they commenting on you knowing very well that you don’t know a bit of what is being spoken? Questions. All sorts. With only wild guesses as answers.  

That’s when you start observing the language. Keenly. Minutely. It takes time. It takes effort. But it’s worth it. It throws surprises in front of you everyday. You can accept it, be frustrated by it, revel in its beauty or have fun handling it. Maybe, it’s like understanding a child. It can be like a stubborn one, not letting you know what it wants and yet crying incessantly around you. And sometimes, when in a good mood, it might let you peep into itself, it might let you feel familiar in its territory.   

Every language has uniqueness to it, a particular manner in which it is spoken, the way words are pressed or emphasized, the way the tongues are rolled, the way the tone is pitched. Language – if you know it well – is like something that could be lying around you like the non-existent but useful furniture item, its presence felt and unfelt at the same time. Or Language when you don’t know it – is like that one useful thing that you need miserably but can’t remember where you put it last time.

Kakinada.  A small town in coastal Andhra Pradesh. That is where I have been putting up since last one month. That is where I had my first stint with an alien language; with Telegu.

Ex - Sarkari Babu

From today onwards, I no longer am the ‘sarkari babu’. A title which I accepted first with reluctance, then with frustration, followed by the understanding of its importance, then with responsibility and finally with a lot of pride.

Even though I come from a family of government officers, I never ever wanted to be one. The idea of going to a same place, doing the same work, meeting the same people everyday never appealed to me. But somehow, I landed one for myself. Within a span of a year, I tried to get out of it. And trust me, I tried really hard.

But as they say, life is what happens when you are busy making other plans. And before I realized, it was around eight years of working in a government office.

They say your first job teaches you the most. I learnt too. I learnt that it is easiest to blame the government when you are on the other side of the table. 

I learnt that it is not that easy for an outsider to understand why things happen in a certain way in a government office. I learnt that being a government officer came with a lot of responsibility towards your country. I learnt that even though you are a smallest part of the government machinery, you can contribute if you want to.

I also learnt that going to a same place everyday could bring a lot of stability. I learnt that doing the same work everyday could become your forte. I learnt that meeting same people everyday could be comforting.

I don’t remember when did I change from being somebody who never wanted to be a government officer to somebody who started defending when people blamed government for everything.

Every workplace has its own pros and cons. This one had too. But as I leave today, I leave with warm friendships, lessons and learnings that will last a lifetime and times that will be etched in memory forever.

~ From an ex - Sarkari babu (Just felt like calling that myself one last time)

'In between'

This period of being ‘in between’ things. The upcoming ironical goodbyes that will be happy and sad at the same time, the shortly due new hellos, the fear and the excitement of beginning afresh somewhere, the zeal and exhaustion that comes at the same time at the thought of proving yourself once again, the new boundaries that you will set and the ones that will be set for you, the chanting that you have been doing to yourself. Saying again and again that the decisions you’ve taken are the right ones, that you haven’t gotten a raw deal. Although its only time that will tell if the chants have proven themselves correct or you have learnt things the harder way once again.

This ‘in between’ feeling. The feeling of being unmoored, unhinged.

Musings - When you reach office early

The familiarity of the place. As you open the cabin door. Day after day. You place your belongings and even the sound of shifting your bag seems too loud. You switch on the lights. And a thought. A flickering one. Can you switch on people’s consciences here like that ever? What if you could? What a different world would that be?

The peculiar smell of this place. You have known it too well now. The smell of old papers, of rusted iron chairs and of misty intentions of people occupying them. The smell of dissatisfaction too lurking somewhere. Sombreness seems to be a vital molecule of the air around.

Click. And the mammoth printer machine buzzes for a couple of minutes as if grunting for waking it up so early. ‘Oh you guys, will you ever let me sleep? You just used me entire day yesterday. Making me work all day long.’ She grumbles.

‘It’s a government office, sweetheart. We need to have everything in black and white. Hence, we need to make you work.’ You want to say to her. Oh but wait. Do you really want everything in black and white here? You laugh inwardly at the irony.

Grey. That’s the shade here. Of people. Of papers. Of realities. Of truths. And of lies.

You notice the tea stained white cup on the table. The proof of a long day at work yesterday. Lying quiet. You touch it, only to be startled by its coldness. Just like the people it serves. It’s been years since you've been here. And yet you fail to understand the reason of getting startled by the coldness here - of the place and people both. 

The unusual quiet that haunts your ears right now. But within moments, it will all start again. The ruffling of papers, the movement of files, clicking of keys on the keyboard, incessant cries of black telephones, fanatic meeting calls, orders masked as requests dipped in honey smooth voices, idle gossip burning your ears, your mind alarmed and awake. 

And the enormity of it all. The way it gobbles you up. For the entire day. Weeks. Months. Years too. And throws out the chewed up version of you at the end of each day.

I. Do Not Belong

The air was chilly. It was late in the night and I was coming back after being dropped by someone midway. Midway. I could feel the chill. But not the one that was around me, the one that was inside me. I don’t know when I started crying. I don’t know how long I cried. The only words that echoed inside me were these, ‘I do not belong’. ‘I do not belong’. I chanted it until all the salt inside me flowed out.

I do not belong to anyone, anywhere. I do not belong to people I call my own, to home I go everyday, to people I serve. I do not belong to the bunch of people I meet every now and then while sharing poor jokes and good alcohol. I do not belong to that one close friend I deeply care about and get intermittently cared in return. I do not belong to that last relationship, the ashes of which I still carry within me. I do not belong to those casual dates which, if nurtured could have meant something. I neither belong to that fling where lust overpowers sanity and self-respect, nor to that one night stand when I went with somebody I didn’t want to.

I do not belong to those chirpy coffee conversations about wedding planning with girlfriends or to morbid conversations about office politics. I do not belong to those lectures where I am moral policed and also to those freewheeling baseless talks when I am told I can achieve anything I want.

I am almost, always out of place. Almost, always I am somewhere I shouldn’t be, with people I don’t want to be around, doing things I don’t care about getting done, talking about things that don’t matter to me, living a façade. And yet, yet I do not know why do I go along. When every fibre inside me wants me to stop trying to ‘belong’ somewhere, someplace.

Because. I. Do not belong.  

Vulnerable

It’s the tightness of the neck which tells me that something is wrong within. I pay attention to other signs. The heartbeat. As expected, it’s fast and loud. So loud that I fear others might hear it. Something strange tugs in the centre of my chest. Like fear beginning to grow strong.  My stomach is in knots. 

But what is the reason? I haven’t had any unpleasant incident today. What is it that is making me choke? I recall the day. One by one, I rewind the incidents, running my fingers over them, touching each one, pressing a bit, seeing if it pains somewhere, tasting the words others had spoken to me, trying to know if any of them tasted bitter or sour, tried smelling the incidents looking for the smell of foul intentions. But I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. I could sense I was missing out on something by the way the thudding in my chest had become louder by now.

Words. It had to be words. I could sense it. I was hit by them. Always am. There is nothing that can affect me the way words can. Deep or shallow, curt or polite, warm or hurtful. It had to be words. They were my panacea. And they were my venom too.

I played the tape of events in my head again. Carefully going through each one them. And just as I had guessed. There they were. My own words. I tasted them in my mouth again. Ran my tongue over each one of them. Tried to flip it around. And they left an ashen taste in my mouth.  

Not because I had spoken something about anyone else. But they were about me. I had revealed something about myself to friends. The kinds you spend your time with by laughing on idiotic jokes and criticizing the people all of you collectively dislike. The conversation innocuously steered towards my insomnia. The way I deal with it. The way I could deal with it better by not spending my time reading. They asked questions. And I had to answer. I couldn’t steer the conversation towards somebody else. So there they were. Discussing me. In front of me.

While I was talking, there was a trigger inside which was asking me to do the damage control, to stop the conversation but I ignored it and now I am regretting. Nothing has happened yet due to my sharing something about myself and yet everything is so different. I feel raw, exposed. I feel vulnerable, weak. Like I am giving the power to other people to destroy me, even though the information might me trivial in their eyes. But to me, to me it’s like handing over a piece of myself and then giving them the power to trigger something that I cannot stop. Somehow, people make me feel vulnerable these days.

On the other hand, there are times when I write about myself and my life. On the blog and on social media. So one could say I am as such revealing myself. I agree I am. But that is the measured part, the harmless part. I am aware of every single word I put out there about myself. The vulnerability creeps in when I am questioned, discussed and probed. What if I say something that will let them know what I think, how I think, what I am going through? That’s the scarier part.     

Does it happen to you? Do you ever feel vulnerable when you share things?    

Terrible to be me

It has rained since morning. Or probably since last night. I woke up to a hazy Sunday afternoon. Distilled and quiet. The balcony is inviting. Shades of green around. My morning (afternoon?) cuppa beside me. I sit with a book, losing my sense of time. Glancing up occasionally at the beauty that only the combination of rain and silence can bring. The contradiction and yet the truth of this.

I choke almost. At something rising within my chest. A longing. A memory so fierce. For someone. Someone familiar? Maybe. Maybe not. Of wrapped arms and intertwined fingers. Of disillusioned realities and opaque dreams.

A longing that could pin you down for hours, or is it days? Who knows. I have already lost my sense of time, remember? Smoked out my rationality. The kind that brings a twinkle in your eyes so bright it could make the stars looks bland. All you hear is silence and your heartbeats. So loud that you fear he can hear them from where he is. Far far away from you. In every sense of the word.

And then maybe he would know what it is like to be me. But let me tell you darling. It is terrible, terrible to be me.

Coffee date. With Myself and some untold stories

Wooden flooring. Wooden furniture. Muted colours and yellow lights. Sunday. Coffee date. With myself. And some untold stories.

Father and son in the diagonal corner. Quiet middle aged son and a cranky looking father. Giving life advices. Maybe finding faults in the way he has been working on his finances.

A newly married couple on their right. Their dewy eyes. The way her mehndi clad hands brush against his. Unknowingly. Or rather knowingly. The eagerness in him to see her eyes smile.

On the next. A college group of four. Too busy in their own selves. The only worry is attendance in the college enough to let them appear for the exam. Crushes. On friends. And teachers too. An overwhelming age. When everything seems possible. When your friends are your therapists and relationship experts.

Four friends again on the next table. Girl gang. Women who hold you at the time of your first heartbreak and also save you from your fashion disasters. Women who share the same impulse of buying shoes. May be bags too. Of choosing wrong guys as well? May be.

Farthest corner. Strangers. I can guess from the stiffness in their body language and also from the regular hot cappuccinos on the table. A chain marketing effort. There are pens and notepads. Ferocious scribbling. ‘For example, if you invest …’ a voice from that table.

Exactly opposite. An occasional look around the room. An occasional longing to hear what others are saying. But mostly in his own self. With his laptop and headphones. Like me. Probably a loner. Like me.

The place smells of coffee. And of untold stories. Only if you are keen to smell. The smell of brewing strong family bonds, of fizzy new love, of warm friendships, of promising business opportunities and of being complete in oneself.

Sunday. Coffee date. With myself. And some untold stories.

‘So what does your dad do?’

You know what, it is burdening to lie every single time when somebody asks, ‘Oh, what does your dad do?’ After mumbling a few incomprehensible words, you hope and try and wish that the conversation steers in some other direction. Every single time, it feels as if I have committed a crime and I am hiding every aspect of it, trying to build stories around it and trying to sound as convincing as possible. Most of the times, I fail myself but hey, I haven’t been caught till date.

Today, I wanted to write some fancy poetry. Unfortunately I am bad at poetry and I don’t think I can put it in words what I feel right now. So I am just going with the flow. This entire month, fitness companies, bakeries, online shopping portals and many more have been bombarding my email account with gifts that can be bought for my dad. I go through every email diligently. Except for the fact that I can’t buy anything. I just cannot. Today. Father’s Day. Sunday. I open my Facebook as I do every day after I wake up. My timeline today is full of people uploading their pictures with their fathers, statuses wishing them and thanking them for whatever they have been to them. I close my Facebook after a few minutes. Tears rolling down my eyes don’t let me see it for a long time. I cry in the bathroom. I know if I cry in open, others will too. I also know somewhere they have cried too. So yeah, I cannot wish my dad, a Happy Father’s Day or put a status message or change my picture with him because he isn’t with us anymore. 14 years ago we lost him. To cancer. (Btw, Fuck you Cancer)

I do not remember what it is to have a father. I do not. In spite of the fact that I was 16 when we lost him. Still, I don’t. Except some glimpses of his sternness towards me all the growing up years and his not showing of emotions that he loved his children (Well, mom says he did and I will have to believe her I guess). I do remember his last months though. In the hospital and at home, seeing him get weaker by the day, losing him bit by bit every single hour, awaiting the doom that clawed its way into our lives minute by minute. And most of all, what I remember is hope. Hope that he will be better. He didn’t.

What followed was sympathy. Pretty obvious right? Except for the fact that I wasn’t ready for it. So, just after the first few days, when a close friend’s mother asked me what would happen to my school fees and that she could pay it for me because they do a lot of ‘charity’ as such, I decided there and then that I shall not reveal that my Dad is no more to anyone. And I have followed that till date. Except a few closest of the friends (seven to be precise) nobody knows this. So when I write this today, understand that it has taken immense amount of courage to come out about this.

I do not remember what it is to have a doting figure who will take care of all the things. I do not know what it is to not be worried about what will happen in future. I also do not know how to think that there is somebody at home who will solve all my issues, emotional, financial or anything else. Well, it is said that daughters are way too close to their dads. But. I do not know. That being said, it does not mean my father wouldn’t have done all this while I was young. This just means that I have a bad memory, may be because I was young and may be because I too have inherited his genes of not showing emotions to people around. (I write about them though. Don't know what he did)

I don’t know why I chose to write this post. I think it’s mostly because I haven’t been able to talk to anybody about this all these years and the burden sometimes gets on to me and most importantly I think I got overwhelmed by all the Facebook activity of dads on my timeline. Yeah, Facebook sometimes does that to you!

If you are reading this, here’s one thing I expect out of you. If you know me personally and have just come to know about this, please do not ask me awkward questions the next time you see me and most of all, please do not sympathize at all.

I sometimes think it was a decision taken in childish zest (I was sixteen. What else do you expect) Maybe that woman was really concerned or maybe it was just the tone of her voice that made me want to hide and not see such ‘charitable’ people again. But I stuck to my decision. Left school. Graduation. Post Graduation. Job. Bus friends. Random friends. Blogger friends. Acquaintances. I kept my word to myself. And kept on answering one awkward question after another. ‘So what does your dad do?’ My answer from now might be this, ‘He watches over us. Somewhere from far far above.’ Happy Father’s Day Dad !

30 and loving it

30. I turned 30 this week. To be true, I don’t even know why I am writing this post. Maybe it’s because 30 is a so-called milestone. Maybe because I am loving the idea of calling myself a 30 year old.  

When I sit to write a post, I always have an idea as to how I want the post to turn out to be. Today, I have none. So this is going to be my first unedited post. Yep. No cuts, no pastes, no edits. I write while I am still drunk on the thoughts of being 30.

Do I want this post to be something like - what wrong things I have done in my twenties? Or what lessons I learnt? May be the good times I had? The regrets of things not done? I have no idea. So I am just going to write whatever comes to mind. May be all of it. May be none. 

I also know that I am not going to be a changed person suddenly. I shall not suddenly start showing different personality traits. Because the changes in you as a person happen only when you are not looking for them. That’s what you call growing up I guess.

When I look at the last decade, all I see is naivety and passion. The naivety of believing in people and passion of loving them with all my heart. I lived the last decade with so much precaution. Doing all the right things. Behaving the way I was supposed to behave. Shielding my heart from hurt. A life without risks. A life with caution. But that’s the worst part of it. Even the life lived with least friction couldn’t stop me from getting myself wounded. I was broken and bruised, tired and tattered. I got hurt and didn’t walk for some time. But eventually I did. Eventually. One step at a time. 

Whatever I am today, I am because of the falls. And I wouldn’t trade my current self for my younger self at any cost. I don’t want to go back to being what I was. When I heard older ones say this, I used to laugh. Why would anybody not want their younger selves? I mocked thinking this was like the sour grapes incident. You can’t have your youth back? So why not say you don’t need it anymore.

But when I say this today that I don’t want to go back to being a younger version of myself, I say it with conviction that only comes with age. I know I sound like I am 60. But that’s the truth of it. I never thought I could write such a pensive post. I never thought I would write serious things about me on the blog. And yet I sit here doing the same.

I don’t wish to preach people in their twenties anything. We all know there are enough posts about the topic and some of them are really good. Plus I am not somebody who is good at advices. To each his own. That’s what I believe.

In the societal version of myself, I should have been settled in a marital bliss by now. But I am not. And I don’t regret it one bit. I know I would do that eventually but not because it is the right thing to do in the eyes of the society but because I would want to.   

If I had to say something to my younger self, it would be this.

•  Read. Read whatever you can lay your hands on. Read because you are going to love it. Read because sometimes it would be the only thing that would save you from drowning. So read.
• The second advice to myself would be this – Take risks. At the most it would turn out to be a wrong turn. But so what? It would at least add to the experience.
• Travel a bit more. That’s one thing you haven’t done at all. So go for it.    

So if the above is what I wanted to do with my last decade, I hope I shall be able to do the same in the next. So when I sit down to write a post a decade later, I hope I would have followed the above and will have new advice to give to myself. That is of course if I am still around that time ;)

Now that I have given advice to my younger self, let me share some for my future self too. Like let me just say what I want to do next. I don’t know how much of it will actually work out, but still, here we go.

•  Learn to express yourself. I know, that coming from a writer is weird. But yeah, I suck at expressing myself in person. Whether it’s expressing love or being assertive.
• Be the badass that you have never been. Don’t take shit. Give it right back to those who deserve it.
• Indulge yourself a bit. You’re worth it.  

 I don’t know if this post makes any sense to you. Its unstructured and all that.  I don’t know if it would make sense to me if I read it again some time later. All I know right now is that I am 30 and I am loving it ;)

Oh, you have a Government Job??? Aish hai ..

BlogAdda's Tangy Tuesday Pick

The first thing that I hear after I tell anybody that I work as a Government Officer is this: ‘Aish hai’ (Read: You are really lucky. No work. Good pay and so many holidays.) I have lost count as to how many times have these words been spoken to me in different permutations and combinations. Each and every one of them remarking on how a government job is a dream job for them and that I am living my dream with no work and good pay. (Read bribes included) So yeah, this is a rant. Against the so-called stupid myths surrounding government officers. Here we go.

We work:

First and foremost. We work. As much as this sounds alien to you, but we, the Government officers work. I know it’s difficult for a lot of people to digest that we actually do something in return for the pay that we get, but yes, we do. We are concerned about projects getting implemented and work getting done on time. I agree it takes time to get your permission papers in place but that is not because we aren’t working, that is because we are bound by procedures. The procedures that are there to safeguard public interests.

Fixed working hours? Not always !

Another so-called perk that we Government officers ‘enjoy’ is that we have fixed number of work hours everyday. We do. But so does every other organization. And just like every other organization, there are days when we sit way past our official leaving time just to finish our work. Here’s a Ripley’s Believe it or Not for you: We have worked even on Sundays and public holidays. In offices and even from our homes. And you know what, we do not get paid extra for this extra time we put in. We do not get eligible for out-of-line promotions because in government, everyone is equal. You work or you do not work, everyone is eligible for promotion or pay according to rules. And yet that does not take away the dedication some of us have towards our jobs. 

Unlimited leaves - A big No

Picture this. A distant relative was celebrating her son’s birthday in a grand way and I was invited. I agreed but told them that I shall have to see if leaves are available. And then came the very expected remark. ‘Oh come on, Jyotsna. You are in government. You can take as many leaves as you want. We know you can manage’ I was told, followed by wink. And I could do nothing but stare in sheer surprise at the ignorance.

Here’s my reply. No. No, we cannot take any number of holidays at our will. Because just like our private counterparts, we too have bosses. As I said above, we also have work. We have procedures to be followed and plus we have limited number of leaves that are granted to us every year like any other organization. So our quota of leaves doesn’t get replenished all by itself any time of the year and hence even Government officers need to plan their leaves.   

We have rules:

Rules. We have them. We follow them. We dread them. Just like any private organization. We are known to be notorious for doing whatever we want on files. I beg to differ. The answer is again a big no. We have audit systems in place. We do have checks and balances. Yes, we do have job security. But that is not a gate pass for us in going around and doing things however we want. As I said, we have rules and regulations and policies in place that we are supposed to follow.     

We are changing:

Get over your image of old sarkari offices that you have in mind where babus are not to be found on their table and if found are just whiling away time looking for lunch and other breaks. Or the women are busy weaving sweaters or pealing pea pods for dinner. Sorry but that is the thing of the past. We are changing. We don’t go around running our personal errands in office time.

I am not saying we, as Government organizations have attained perfection. No, we have not. We still have a long way to go. Just like our country. But we have improved and are improving day by day. Just like this country. I am not saying every government officer you meet is an epitome of dedication towards their work. No, they aren’t. But not all of them are lazy buffoons who got lucky by getting a government job and all they have to do in office is while away time. We, in government have our share of ‘hard’ working and ‘hardly’ working officers. Just like any other private organization.

Some of us in Government are trying to make things work in every little way possible. I do not know how far have we succeeded or how long will we take to succeed. But next time, please do not belittle some of us or our work by saying ‘Aish hai’.